Habitus Loves… Upcycling

Inverting the traditional progression of materials becoming less attractive and valuable over the course of their lives, upcycling seeks to take un-needed, exhausted, and discarded items and utilise them in new and improved formats. This week we look at eight of our favourite examples in the class.

Cyclesign Wheel Reflector

Created by: Etsy

Why we love it: Cyclesigns are unique bicycle reflectors made from used road signs, designed to be easily installed around the spokes in a bicycle wheel. The felt padding and fasteners are the only new material used in the manufacture of these bicycle reflectors.

Why we love it: This fashionably chunky Bicicleta shag gives worn-out inner tubes a brand-new spin. The collection was born out of research into the possibility of using recycled rubber to create new textures. It is made out of 100% recycled bicycle inner tubes. The result was a new carpet collection made from recycled bicycle inner tubes, called Bicicleta.

Why we love it: In response to a client’s request for bespoke chairs to go around a table in the waiting area of their new showroom, Revived Furniture sourced eight completely different chairs and painted them in the same shade of pink to unify the contrasting design styles, creating a heterogenous but coherent collection.

Why we love it: OnStone images are printed directly onto salvaged discarded stone using a new generation UV-cured ink, framed with timber reclaimed from old fences and flooring. The result is a fine art quality image that is scratch resistant and has uninterrupted depth, with no reflection between image and viewer.

Why we love it: The rag rug is made from old worn out Nudie Jeans denims. The jeans are cut down to serrated strips which are sewn together and then rolled up on spools. The strips are then woven together by hand on a manual shuttle loom. The weft is made from indigo dyed thread, the same that’s used for the Nudie Jeans denims.

Why we love it: Why we love it: PaperStone® is made from 100% post-consumer recycled paper that has been saturated with proprietary PetroFree™ phenolic resins and selected natural pigments on treater lines. Dense, strong and versatile, it lends itself to a wide variety of applications.

Why we love it: From a social enterprise in Jakarta, Indonesia these passport holders are made from recycled advertising banners. The enterprise have worked with artisans in a small village to set up a workshop and provided microfinance for sewing machines, creating a cool, pleasant environment for the workers, and assisting with training in quality control and production planning.

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